INHALED IT? WELL I SURE SAW IT

Labour leader Helen Clark refused to say in the Holmes leader's debate last
night whether she had smoked marijuana, but suggested she had encountered
it. And she also suggested she might later regret her decision not to have
children.

Asked by Paul Holmes if she had ever inhaled marijuana, Helen Clark said:
"Do you want to bring politics to this level?

"Look, I attended university in the late 1960s. It would be foolish for any
politician or indeed person around circles in those areas to deny that they
ever saw it."

Quipped Holmes: "Did you ever lie on the floor and listen to Peter Frampton
with headphones on?"

Helen Clark: "No, I didn't."

She said she supported "partial decriminalisation" of marijuana where
possession was punished with a fine.

Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, who attended teacher's college, said she had
never smoked marijuana.

"The use of cannabis leads to the use of other drugs and National opposes
that."

Helen Clark, aged 49, was quizzed about not having children.

Asked if she could fully understand the pressures on families given that
she does not have children, she said: "I haven't had children and that may
be a source of enormous sadness to me one day.

"But I come from a family of four girls.

I'm the oldest.

I have eight nieces and nephews, my husband has seven."